Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
But before I do, I have to say I'd have posted this in your comments, except when the page refreshes to update your iTunes play list it wipes out whatever has been entered in the comments form. Grrr.
People just do thing, events just happen, and meaning is extracted from our memories of the events. If we do stuff in order to project a meaning, that will just be another element that goes into the memory bank, another part of the pattern from which meaning will actually be extracted.
I'm not sure Black folks who blog are doing anything different than any other bloggers. Some of us do politics, some have personal blogs, whatever whatever. But writing this makes me think about exactly what is a "Black blogger." Because it's not just a Black person who has a blog. A number of Black folks what blog don't have what you'd call "Black content" (which I'm using as shorthand for "content derived from and/or targeted to participants in African American culture and their activities"). It's hard to tell some folks are Black just from the content.
So do you include a Steve Gilliard or a Jesse Taylor as Black bloggers? I don't know…I include them as Black guys, but they don't focus on Black content like any number of us do. They're not in denial or anything either, it's more like it makes no sense to say, "I'm Black and Bush sucks." I've seen both of them be very clear that they are Black when it was appropriate to the subject they were writing on. But I don't know if I'd call them "Black bloggers."
I think I have to switch up a bit and refer to "Black blogs" instead of "Black bloggers" for clarity's sake. I can skip the extra quotes that way.
So. What does it mean to run a Black blog? I think it's either an attempt to make a statement or a connection. In my case, it's the statement (though to be honest, the connections I've made incidental to the statements I've made have been rather cool. Not deep, but that may be me).
You remember that old cartoon:
Of course, nowadays we know better. We know it's more like this:
The real response to the first cartoon, though, is "What's wrong with being a dog?"
Why should someone be satisfied by acceptance that comes at the price of anonymity? Is that acceptance anyway?
All Black people view themselves from the outside as well as from the inside to a degree that mainstream folks do not understand. This is what DuBois meant by his dual soul formulation, to this day the best description of the core problem of being Black in the USofA I've ever read. And while traveling in the mainstream, Black folks tend to give primacy to the external view for practical reasons.
The connections made online, through blogs, mailing lists, discussion boards and the like, provide opportunities to express and develop that internal view in ways that are socially unprecedented. That Black topics don't have the same weight in everyone's internal view is fine. In fact, it helps shatter the stereotypes and scatter the pieces.
And we're STILL not doing anything any other blogger isn't doing.
Hm.. are you trying to post directly from the linked page, or from the little comments pop-up box? If you're posting from the linked page, head to the front page of the site and click the comments list - no refresh problems from there.
I've been thinking about Muslim blogs since you mentioned this topic earlier today. There are lots of blogs that are by Muslims, but only some of them you can tell that by looking at them. It isn't necessarily that they discuss Islam or post religious materials, but they do in some way discuss what it's like being a Muslim today. The ones I link to are the ones that I can tell are Muslim.
I made a deliberate choice when I started my blog to talk about Islam and about Muslim issues. I try to post things that help non-Muslims learn about Islam. Deciding on this focus for the blog means that there are things that I don't talk about there. That's part of why I have so many other blogs, so that I can explore other things that interest me and give them the attention that they deserve.
Not every Muslim wants to or is able to take on a task like this. And I don't think that a blogger should have to write about Muslim issues just because they happen to be Muslim. But a lot of people do, because they want to help others understand.
It's very interesting to compare this with your discussion of Black bloggers and Black blogs.
I wanted people to know I was black when I started a blog. That way, when I say something, they know exactly who said it and know that the words are colored. heh heh heh...
But your right P6, we don't do anything different than other bloggers. And it is quite a shame that there is some kind of a distinction with "black bloggers" and other bloggers. Like we going to weigh you down with all that "black stuff". That can be said about liberal and conservative bloggers. All the left and right "stuff".